Diseases of modern life.

  • Richardson, Benjamin Ward, 1828-1896.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of modern life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    duration of the life of the Jew being forty-eight years and nine months, and of the Christian thirty-six years and eleven months. In the total of all ages, half of the Jews born reach the age of fifty-three years and one month, r/hilst half the Christians born attain the age of thirty-six years only. A quarter of the Jewish population is found living beyond seventy-one years, but a quarter of the Christian population is found living beyond the age of fifty-nine years and ten months only. The Civil State extracts of Prussia give to the Jews a mortality of 1.61 per cent. ; to the whole king- dom 2.62 per cent. To the Jews they give an annual increase of 1.73 per cent; to the Christians, 1.36 per cent. The effectives of the Jews require a period of forty-one years and a half to double themselves; those of the other races fifty-one years. In 1849 Prussia returned one death for every forty of the Jews, and one for every thirty-two of the remaining population. The Jews escape the great epidemics more readily than the other races with whom they live. Thus the the mortal- ity from cholera amongst them is so small that the very fact of its occurrence has been disputed. Lastly, that element of mortality, suicide, which we may look upon philosophically as a phenomenon of disease, is computed by Glatter from a proportion of one million of inhabitants of Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Austria, Hun- gary, and Transylvania, to have been committed by rather less than one of the Jewish race to four of the members of the mixed races of the Christian populations. Different causes have been assigned for this higher vitality of the Jewish race, and it were indeed wise to seek for the 'causes, since that race which presents the strongest vitality, the greatest increase of life, and the longest resistance to death, must, in course of time, become, under the influences of civilization, dominant. We see this truth indeed actually exemplified in the Jews; for no other known race has ever endured so much or resisted so much. Persecuted, oppressed by every imaginable form of tyranny, they have held together and lived, carrying on intact their customs, their beliefs, their faith for centuries, until, set free at last, they flourish as if endowed with new force. They rule more potently than ever, far more potently than when Solomon in all his glory reigned in Jerusalem. They rule, and neither fight nor waste. Happily we have not far to go to find many causes for the